Introducción

Chapter three: methodology
This research is divided in two parts; the first part of this study consisted of a discourse
analysis of a cartoon, the second part consisted of showing one of the analyzed episodes to a
group of children and making them questions about what they saw in order to know children´s
perceptions about the cartoon. This section will present in Part 1 the methodology of the
discourse analysis and in Part 2 the description of the participation of children.
3.1 Part 1 – Discourse analysis
The first part of this investigation consisted of analyzing the discourse used in the
cartoon The Fairly OddParents, whose name in Spanish is Los Padrinos Mágicos and whose
programs have been translated and dubbed into Spanish from English. This cartoon was
chosen for analysis based upon the description provided by the network Nickelodeon, which
describes it as follows:
A ballistic babysitter… Off-the-wall parents… Boring video games… What’s a 10-year
old to do? If you’re Timmy Turner, all you gotta do is turn to your magical, mystical and
totally messed-up Fairy Godparents for help. But when the fairies involved are as
wacky as Cosmo and Wanda (and as cute as Baby Poof), you might get more “help”
than you bargained for! (Nick, 2010).
The general picture provided by the television network suggests that the story of The
Fairly OddParents narrates the life of a typical boy that turns to be more interesting and
adventurous when he is with his fairy godparents. Taking into account this description, it
would not be expected to find verbal aggressions as a form of interaction of such a show.
However, the aim of the analysis of discourse is to see whether verbal violence is present or
not and if so, what types of assaults are more common. In addition, this cartoon was selected
because it is transmitted in Canal 5, a public television channel in Mexico, which might suggest
that the number of viewers is higher because of the accessibility more chil dren h...